The Big "60"

A few weeks ago, my father-in-law, Harald, turned 60 years old. Ranae and the rest of the family planned a surprise birthday party for the big occasion. He was really surprised which was a shock to all of us. Kari (Erik's sister) and I decorated the main table with photos, year books, his favorite candy and various items documenting his life through the years.

All in all, it was a big success. Here is my favorite picture from the night. Harald with Soren, his first grandchild. There's really nothing better than family.

Speaking of birthday's...my sister celebrated one on Sunday and my niece turns 6 next week. Happy birthday to everyone!!! :)

Road Trip: St. George

Erik and I recently went boating in St. George with some of our friends for two days. Our friends parent's recently bought a second home in St. George and I was so excited when they invited us. The house was awesome! It even had a pool, which was naturally heated to about 90 degrees.

Each day we went out onto Sand Hollow Reservoir and spent the afternoons wake boarding, playing on the amazing red sand beaches, cliff jumping and just enjoying each other's company. It was hot, uncrowded and the water was even warm enough for me to get in.


Kobe (our friend who had the boat) did some incredible tricks on the wake board.


To Erik's surprise, I got enough guts to try wake boarding and wake surfing. It was so fun! It only took me a couple of tries to get up on each of the boards...thank goodness. I obviously couldn't do any tricks, but I did go in and out of the wake on the wake board which I couldn't believe. Beginners luck I guess.

Here's a quick video of me wake surfing. They even caught my fall on tape. :)

Thank you to the Pearson's for the invitation/hospitality and also to Kobe and Emily for letting us have fun on their boat. Sand Hollow Reservoir is my new favorite place in St. George!


Note - I wanted to post some pictures of Erik on the wake board but they are on someone else's camera. :(

Family Visit

A couple of weeks ago, my sister and her family visited Erik and I for a few days. I always enjoy having them in town and since my parents are on their mission, it's even better because they get to stay at our house. While they were here we:

Played Nintendo Wii (my 8 yr. old niece beat me at bowling)...

Did dog tricks with Khloe...

And went swimming at the Murray pool. Erik spent hours wrestling with the kids and I went down the swirly slide with Kayla about 20 times. It sure beats laying on a towel all afternoon.

My sister and I were even pretty daring and jumped off the diving board a few times. Dangerous I know. :) It's been atleast 10 years since I can remember doing that and I was glad I convinced Liisa to do it as well. It made for a very fun day at the pool.

Before they left, we even squeezed in a family photo session but due to some temperamental children, we really only got a good "couple" shot of my sister and her husband.

It was a great couple of days with the Lopez's and I can't wait to see them again. Unfortunately, we probably won't see them until Thanksgiving or Christmas. I hate having family live so far away. :(

New York: Part 4

This is the last post about our New York trip. Our final day in the "Big Apple" was a lot of fun. We spent the day in uptown Manhattan where we visited the Temple, Museum of Natural History, Central Park, and on our way back to Bryan's, we met Nicolas Cage.

It's interesting to see the Temple amidst all of the other buildings uptown. If you don't look up to see Angel Moroni, you would probably just walk right past it like we almost did.

If I were to ever live in New York, I think I would want to live uptown. Central Park is absolutely beautiful. I'm always amazed at how big the park is. In 1859 when the park was first constructed, more than 270,000 trees and shrubs were planted. Incredible!

The Museum of Natural History was one of my favorite sites. We only had about 2 hours so we had to race through the entire thing. Erik and I could have spent the whole day there. They have everything from prehistoric dinasour remains, life size replicas of animals including a blue whale, and the largest meteorite to ever be placed in a museum. It really is incredible!!!!

As Erik and I were walking to a subway stop on our way back to Bryan's house, we passed a large film set and asked some people what was going on. They were filming a Nicolas Cage movie called "The Sorcerer's Apprentice". Erik and I were very surprised to see how much went into filming a movie. There had to have been atleast 50 people there working and they probably only filmed about 5 seconds worth of footage in the 45 minutes we stood there. Nicolas Cage eventually came over and I asked him if he would take a picture with me. He was very nice and said 'yes'. Then, the worst happened....the camera wouldn't work. I got so mad at Erik, even though I knew it wasn't his fault. Oh well.

That basically sums up our vacation to New York. It was a lot of fun, but we were ready to go back home. I couldn't wait to see Khloe and get in our car to drive somewhere. :) Walking all the time gets very tiring. Maybe next time we go back to New York, Bryan will have his own gallery open. He is very talented and actually has a painting in the Smithsonian. Prince Charles also has one of his paintings and he recently sold this one below that is currently hanging in his apartment. You can view some of his work by going here.

Thanks again Bryan for letting us stay with you. We had a blast!

New York: Part 3

The U.S. Open finally arrived. We were supposed to go to the final day of the tournament, but due to rain delays earlier in the week, we were actually going to see the 3rd round and not the 4th because it had been pushed to Monday. The tournament took place at the Bethpage Black course in Farmingdale, New York. Before we left for our trip, we did a little research to see what we could bring to the course. Erik read that we couldn't bring any cameras. I couldn't believe it! I was very upset that we wouldn't have any photos documenting our day. Seriously, the click of a camera is really going to distract the players? They deal with heckling fans all day.

The day of the tournament, we had to wake up around 6am in order to make the train to Farmingdale. It took us about two hours to get to the "check point" where we had to check our very small backpack because it had STRAPS. So retarded! We got to the course around 10am and because the course was so wet, they delayed the start times until noon. That gave us time to do a little walking around and watch the players warm up at the driving range. We were also able to get our one and only picture for the day with the U.S. Open trophy. (I doubt it was really the actual trophy though.)


I have to say that I wasn't really looking forward to an entire day of golf, but to my surprise, watching golf in person is way more entertaining than on TV even with my tired and soaking wet feet. Thanks to portable TV's the guys got at the course for free, we were able to watch the live coverage and scout out our route for watching players throughout the day. It's very hard to follow players because there are so many people. In order to watch Tiger, we had to find out what hole he was currently on and then walk to the hole three or four places in front of him. I couldn't believe how many people were there and Erik was surprised how much more narrow the fairways are when you see them in person. These guys were incredible to watch and we all had a lot of fun. Bryan and Jon went back on Monday to watch the final round, but Erik and I decided to stay in and watch it on TV. Overall, I think Erik really enjoyed his anniversary gift. I know I did.

New York: Part 2

Our second day in New York consisted of midtown Manhattan. Our first stop was the G.E. Building, where they have the "Top of the Rock". This is one of my favorite New York attractions because the views are incredible. Unfortunately for us, it was very cloudy but it was still beautiful. While on the 70th floor and 850 feet above street level, you see the Empire State Building and southern Manhattan from one side and on the other, you see Central Park and northern Manhattan. Being above most of the buildings really is amazing. This is one of my "must see" attractions if you are ever in the Big Apple.


After Rockefeller Center, we walked over to St. Patrick's Cathedral. As we walked inside, I noticed that a wedding was taking place. To my surprise, I was able to walk up to about the 5th row and take some pictures of the ceremony. Since witnessing a wedding at St. Patrick's isn't something that can be planned, I was very excited to be there. I doubt that will ever happen again.


While in New York, we took the subway everywhere. It was really nice when Bryan was with us because we didn't have to figure out where to go. Taking the subway got a little boring, but Erik did a great job navigating our stops. We got on the right train every single time. Me on the other hand, had a difficult time getting through the gates. I scanned my Metro card once and didn't get through fast enough so I had to ask a girl if I could squeeze behind her as she walked in. Thankfully, I only had to do that once. :)


Last on our agenda for day 2 was a piano concert at Carnegie Hall with Jon and Bryan. You'll notice in the picture that Jon and Bryan are dressed up and we weren't. Erik and I had been out all day sightseeing so we didn't have time to change. I wanted to dress up, but oh well. Anyway...I've been to NY a couple of times and this was something I had never done before. This was the pianist's Carnegie Hall debut and she played absolutely beautiful! The concert lasted about 1 1/2 hours and I'm guessing she memorized around 75-100 pages of music. Being a pianist myself, I can't even imagine memorizing that many pages and playing so many songs back to back. Her forearm muscles must have been sore! Afterwards, we started talking in the lobby and she came out to see her family. I asked her if we could take a picture and they were very excited. Her husband took pictures with their camera so she could have pictures with her "fans". :) It was pretty funny.


Stay tuned for part 3. Erik's favorite day....the U.S. Open!

4th of July Celebrations

I'm interrupting my New York postings to share our 4th of July celebration. I spent the evening with my sister and her two girls, Lindsay and Kayla, who were in town visiting us and other family members.

Lindsay (8) and Kayla (6) are two of the many girls infatuated with the Jonas Brothers who headlined the concert at Stadium of Fire this year, which we got to attend. When the Jonas Bros. came out for their first song the stadium went wild with screams. You could barely hear the music. I didn't know any of their songs but it was still fun for me to be there with my sister and nieces.

My favorite part of the evening, besides the incredible fireworks, was when I got to witness something I've never seen before. They stopped the firework show part way through and had a flag burning ceremony. The giant flag that has been used for many football games and Stadium of Fire events was finally being retired. Members of the army carried the flag in and placed it in a big silver container. Glenn Beck, the night's host, was very emotional as he introduced the burning of the flag. It was very cool to see.

For the last three years, I've spent the 4th of July at the Stadium of Fire with my nieces and it has been so much fun. Unfortunately, Erik hasn't been able to come and I am looking forward to the next "4th" so we can be together. I hope you all had a wonderful and safe 4th of July. What a wonderful country we live in!

New York: Part 1

While in New York, Erik and I stayed with his friend Bryan, who is a painter living in Brooklyn. He met Bryan through his friend, Jon who also went to New York with us. We spent a total of 4 days in New York and were able to see and do many exciting things. Here is part 1. Sorry it's so long; it was a very busy day.

Our first day consisted of the southern tip of Manhattan. We started off by taking a ferry ride to the Statue of Liberty and then on to Ellis Island. We really lucked out with the weather because it was supposed to rain the entire time, but we had mostly clouds and a few bursts of hot, humid sunshine. I wore boots thinking I'd be cold on the ferry. Big mistake. I was so sweaty as we stood in the two hour long line to take the ferry over to Liberty Island. It was worth it though. The statue was beautiful and we got some great shots of the New York skyline.

About an hour later, we got to Ellis Island. Between 1892 and 1954 over 12 million immigrants entered the United States through Ellis Island. My grandparents came through Ellis Island when they immigrated to America and it was really interesting to hear and read about what their experience must have been like. One of the things I was most fascinated about was looking at the passenger manifests and individual passport documents that were displayed. Their handwriting was immaculate! Every letter was perfectly written and I'm sure they were under a lot of stress and time constraints. It was beautiful.

Next on our agenda was a little bit of walking. First, we stopped at the "charging bull" by Wall Street. An Italian artist spent about $360,000 to create the sculpture in 1987. In an act of "guerrilla art", he trucked it to lower Manhattan, installed it beneath a 60-foot Christmas tree in the middle of Broad Street as a Christmas gift to the people of New York. The police seized the sculpture later the next day and placed it at an impound lot. The public outcry led the parks and recreation department to install it in the plaza at Bowling Green shortly after.

As we continued to walk through the city, we passed the New York Stock Exchange where Erik and Jon stopped to talk to a few NYPD officers who were on duty patrolling the area fully armed with machinery and canines. They told us that since 9/11, officers are always there because they anticipate future terrorist attacks on the Exchange. Hopefully that will never happen, but it's comforting to know that they are prepared for the worst.

Next was Trinity Church (where parts of National Treasure were filmed) and Ground Zero. At Ground Zero, we spoke to a man on security who described a little bit about what they were planning to build and how high the original towers were. He pointed to a nearby building and said the previous buildings were 2 1/2 times that height. I couldn't believe it! Below is a picture of the pit where they are in the beginning stages of building new towers. The tallest one, named the Freedom Tower will be a symbolic 1776 feet tall marking the year of the Declaration of Independence signing. Very cool!

(Rendition of Freedom Tower & Surrounding Towers)

After Ground Zero, we headed to Little Italy for some yummy dinner. We ate at a restaurant called Cafe Napoli and after some good food and great conversation, we were ready to get back to Bryan's and climb into bed. We were very tired. Stay tuned for part 2.